Daily Life Lessons from Rabbi Heschel

Year 2 Day 232

“It is not by the rare act of greatness that character is determined, but by everyday actions, by a constant effort to rend our callousness. It is constancy that sanctifies. Judaism is an attempt to place all of life under the glory of ultimate significance, to relate all scattered actions to the One. Through the constant rhythm of prayers, disciplines, reminders, joys, man is taught not to forfeit his grandeur.” (God in Search of Man pg. 384)

These words of Rabbi Heschel are haunting me and, I hope, everyone. How “not to forfeit his grandeur” seems to have become obsolete in today’s world, in our country, in our homes. Yet, it is an imperative, a call, a demand of Rabbi Heschel to all of us. Rabbi Heschel was respected and loved, heard and followed by people of all faiths in his lifetime and yet, so many of us have forgotten his call, his actions, his teachings and his wisdom in our daily actions. We quote him, there are books written about him, we extol him, and we are not really living into the wisdom and brilliance of both his words and his example of how to live in and with grandeur.

We need to become “full-grown” human beings, not completely “full-grown” as we will always be imperfect, yet we need to grow up and recognize the grandeur of our humanity. We have to, as Rabbi Heschel teaches elsewhere, be human. This begins in our homes, in our families, in our schools, in our playgrounds. We have to stop seeing an opponent as our enemy, we have to end the incessant call to ‘kill the umpire’, be afraid of the stranger, ignore the poor, disdain the needy.

In our families, we have to begin this process of becoming “full-grown” by acknowledging the individual worth of every member of the family. We have to stop trying to make our family members over in our image and honor the Image of God they are created in. By acknowledging the individual spirit and essence of each family member, we give one another the space to grow in their own unique grandeur and honor the unique grandeur of the other members of our family units. Of course we have to teach and help one another grow in decency, kindness, truth, love and we have to speak to one another in ways they can hear, not the ways we want them to. We also have to listen to the soul needs, the moral needs, the intellectual needs of one another in order for us to grow and help them grow as well. When every member of the family knows they matter, we have a strong spiritual, intellectual, and moral foundation that grows as we grow, we are less susceptible to the deceptions of self and another(s), we become disdainful of mendacity, we seek to honor our grandeur, we seek to acknowledge and honor the grandeur of everyone we encounter. No longer are our siblings our rivals, they are our teammates. No longer do we see ‘outsiders’ as ‘coming to get us’, we see them as human beings who are on the road to grandeur with us.

In our religious institutions, we need to use our rituals, prayers, disciplines to enhance the grandeur of the individual as well as the community. We do this by immersing ourselves in the drive to becoming “full-grown”. Using our foundational texts, we study, relate and discuss our ‘heroes’ and their examples of both self-deceptions and grandeur. We learn how “love your neighbor as you love yourself” becomes the foundation for our growing into being human. We use the commandments not as things to do, to fulfill, rather as the pathways for growing into our authentic selves. We don’t use our religion as a weapon against anyone else, we don’t proclaim that ‘our way is the one right way’, instead we are joyful for the music that sings to us and the music of our soul that finds harmony and “home” in the religious/spiritual practices we are part of.

The challenge, of course, is to be strong enough to ward off the bombardment of mendacity, needing a “bad guy”, blaming, shaming of another(s), the pull of the authoritarian, the ‘savior’. I grew up in a home where each of us were seen as individuals by our father, we learned from our grandfather how to live without rancor, hatred and yet, I fell prey to forfeiting my grandeur for quite a while, over 20 years. I am sad that it took me till I was 37 to truly understand the paths of grandeur my father had taught me. His was an imperfect life and one of grandeur, my grandfathers were not rich, did not live in glorious splendor and they did not “forfeit” their grandeur. Judaism, a program of recovery, the examples of my ancestors, the teachings of Rabbi Heschel and so many others, along with Harriet and Heather have helped me be more “full-grown” in these last 34+ years and I work hard to not “forfeit my grandeur” each day. I pray we all continue to recapture our path to grandeur, to love, to kindness, to forgiveness and to truth. God Bless and stay safe, Rabbi Mark